KARACHI The quadrennial elections of the Pakistan Tennis Federation slated to be held at Islamabad Club on November 26 noon will be a close contest among three candidates including incumbent president Dilawar Abbas. Other two candidates in the race are IG police Islamabad Kaleem Imam and Shahida Farooq, an active promoter of the game who is also chairperson of Subh-e-Nau, an NGO involved in environmental issues. Nomination papers of the three candidates were accepted by the PTF on November 16 which was the deadline date for the submission of the papers. Dilawar Abbas got his nomination endorsed by the Sindh Tennis Association while Balochistan supported Kaleem Imam. The HEC approved Shahida Farooq, according to reliable information available here Monday. Shahida Farooq is the first lady to challenge mens domination in the PTF. Since independence to date, only men have held presidential positions in the PTF and for the first time in 60 years, Shahida is trying to end that domination. There are 15 units of the PTF with votes who will decide the fate of these three candidates. Some of those units have already lost their voting power for technical reasons because they had not followed the PTF constitution which demand that every unit should organise a national ranking tournament once a year otherwise it would lose its voting right which can only be restored after fulfilling the constitutional condition. Provinces of Balochistan and KPK have not held any ranking events for various reasons allegedly for years but the PTF ignored the breach of the constitution when these two gave an understanding that they would cast their votes in favour the incumbent officials. Similarly, some of the departments with full voting right have also lost their voting rights for the same reasons. But they still have voting power with them. The fifteen voting units are four provinces Sindh,Punjab, Balochistan and KPK and Islamabad Tennis Association, Army, Navy, PAF, HEC, Wapda, Railways, POF Wah, Pakistan Senior Tennis Association and International Club. Kaleem Awan has nominated Zulfiqar Rahim, father of Marium sisters as his secretarial candidate. Dilawar Abbas had retained the same old team that has worked with him for the eight years. They are Major Rashid (secretary) Arif Qureshi of PTV. Shahida Farooq has Dr Jawwad Chisti as her secretary and Zahid Jaffrey as treasurer.